Something Real
by northernexposure
Summary: Kathryn contemplates following the events of Fair Haven. Mature themes.


**Something Real**

**A/N:** Mature themes ruminated about within. Set after _Fair Haven_. (Which, though I know I may be stoned for saying so, I really liked.) Pretty angsty, this. Another of my fics set around an Adrienne Rich poem.

* * *

_She sits with one hand poised against her head, the_

_other turning an old ring to the light_

_for hours our talk has beaten_

_like rain against the screens_

_a sense of August and heat-lightning_

_I get up, go to make tea, come back_

The Aft Observation deck is something of a hinterland. No one really comes here. It is the size of the mess hall, but arranged more formally. Rows of chairs line up one against the other. They face the windows that run the length of the hull, reminiscent of the seating arrangements one would find on the decks of the Staten Island ferry that still run for the sake of the tourists. When _Voyager_ was commissioned, her designers likely envisioned groups of enraptured scientists sitting here, staring out at the wonder of a new nebula or watching as a star went supernova.

But then, things so rarely work out as they are imagined.

At the moment, the room is dark. The door opening and closing is probably the first sound and motion the atoms within have witnessed for days. _Voyager_'s captain notes that since her last visit, someone has placed a few crates in one disused corner. Not exactly protocol, but the cargo bays are overflowing. Needs must when the devil drives, isn't that the old saying?

Apart from the boxes, the room is as empty as her last visit. She comes here infrequently, but it is nonetheless a haven. Here, she is unlikely to be stumbled upon by accident. It would take someone deliberately looking for her to find her here, especially since she has removed her communicator so that the computer will be unable to pinpoint her location. Anyone needing her now would have to put out a ship-wide announcement. This deliberate evasion is irresponsible. She smiles at the thought. It is not an expression of mirth.

Kathryn Janeway goes to the room's single replicator and orders tea. She avoids the flowery, herbal type. She asks instead for Irish Breakfast Blend, blunt and strong-tasting – brutish, even. In the country of its origin, she has been told, it is more often known as 'builder's tea'.

"_My old pa used to say, 'make it strong enough that the spoon'll stand up on its own, son'."_

The hologram's words echo in her head as she takes the chunky white mug, the vessel perfectly appropriate for its indelicate contents. Her lips twist a little as she takes a mouthful. Of course, Michael Sullivan never actually _had _a father.

_But then again_, she thinks, the bitterness remaining even as the drink slips down her gullet, _this is only replicated tea. _

She goes to the window and leans against one of the bulkheads, looking out at the stars from a different angle. Not that it makes a difference, of course. She may as well be standing in her ready room, for all the change her gaze can make out in the cosmos at which she stares. As much as she loves the starscape, it would be the same from any window on this ship. Kathryn Janeway has built her life around a longing for exploration and yet sometimes… sometimes…

Her life is so full of illusion that occasionally, when the veil lifts, when the mask cracks, Kathryn Janeway realises that she hardly even knows who she is any more. And in any case, what is there to know? She has spent six years maintaining an illusion: that aboard this ship, they all still have a shade of the lives she made them leave behind. She keeps them in check, she holds up a rulebook written for lives conducted 60,000 light years away and she tells them that it's the right way to live. But it doesn't take much to jar her conviction these days. Staring out at these stars, for example. These dense, bright pinpoints of light have been dead for millennia, and yet they seem more real to her than anything she owns; anything she is. Anything she _has_.

Her most recent exploits, she thinks, are a perfect case in point.

Michael Sullivan.

Scarcity of sex has never previously been a problem for her. A career in Starfleet inevitably means long periods in the depths of space, after all. _Voyager_'s unexpected detour to the Delta Quadrant is not the first time she's gone without for a prolonged period of time. In her younger years, once the grief of losing Justin had become less raw, there were on-board dalliances, of course. But once the long friendship between her and Mark had matured into something else, she'd had no problem being faithful. She was older by then, perfectly able to distinguish between the fun and indiscriminate passion of youth and the longer-lasting rewards of older, deeper love.

And yet… Michael Sullivan.

It wasn't as if 'intimate relations', as the Doctor had so euphemistically termed them, were unheard of between humans and holograms. Indeed, the planetary deficit of the Ferengi homeworld would be far larger without their roaring trade in exactly that. But Kathryn had never felt the need. Or rather, if she ever _had_ felt the need, she had dismissed it as not for her. Each to their own, but no, that was not for her.

And _yet_… Michael Sullivan.

Was it just that he'd caught her eye? Because he had, immediately. For all her subsequent tweaking of his sub-routines, she had walked into that pub and been drawn to him just as he was. Broad-shouldered, scar-faced, lilt-tongued. Apart from the obvious, he was all man, and there was something that had sparked in her at the sight of him - little lick of electricity; the forgotten tremor that existed in eyes meeting unexpectedly across a room.

She had returned to the bridge and thought about him, a spinning frisson that felt real enough and that she hadn't wanted to let go. It had been a long time since she'd felt that pull, that excitement. At least without it being immediately crushed by the weight of words such as _must not, cannot, will not_.

The sex, when it had happened, had been good. Could she have gone without for another six years, another sixty? Probably. Did she _need_ it? No. But she'd wanted it, and there was no reason not to have it. Why should she hold back? Why shouldn't she enjoy herself? And make no mistake about it: in the moment, on that riverbank with the sun and only the sun on her back, she had enjoyed it. In those moments, she'd felt more like Kathryn than she had in a long time.

So why did she feel so empty now? Why was she standing here, alone, staring out at stars that had been dead for longer than the human race had existed, instead of leaning on that bar and laughing with her lover?

Perhaps it was the immediate aftermath. She'd lied to the Doctor. It wasn't about the damn snoring. She'd put up with Mark snoring for years. For Janeway, who spent so many nights alone when away onboard ship, any sound of another person at night was a welcome reminder that she was not alone. No, it was more base than that. Michael had fallen asleep on that riverbank and after a while of dozing herself, she'd realised the time. She had to be on duty in less than an hour, and she'd wanted a shower first. So Kathryn had extricated herself and stood up, expecting the usual evidence of coital congress. But there had been no residual rush of him between her legs. There was no tell-tale stickiness on her thighs. She didn't feel sore, despite how long it had been. There was nothing. And she knew, then, that even though she could remember his lips and tongue travelling across her breasts and belly, despite the orgasm that had most definitely been real and that she had most definitely enjoyed… she'd been alone. As alone as she had been for the past six years. Alone, always alone.

So she'd left. She'd just… left.

The Doctor would have her believe that there was no difference between photons and forcefields and flesh and blood. His words to that effect had pulled her up short. _He's as real as I am_. Thought-provoking, that statement, and self-evidently true. Maybe that was true from a male perspective. Maybe that fundamental difference in biology was all it took.

_and then she says (and this is what I live through, _

_over and over), she says: I do not know_

_if sex is an illusion_

She had felt the difference. She had felt the lack. The sex had been physical enough, her release real enough. So if it wasn't sex that she'd wanted, what was it? Or was it just another kind of sex? Was it just that fundamental difference between being alone and not alone? The proof of another's life?

Janeway is so lost in the convoluted drift of her thoughts that for a moment she doesn't register the swish of the door opening and closing behind her.

"So here you are. I was beginning to think you'd run off with a shuttlecraft."

At the sound of his voice, her shoulders tense. The hands gripping the mug tighten around its heat. She doesn't turn around.

"Something I can do for you, Commander?"

She feels him move closer, though his footfall is as soft as ever. He appears in the corner of her eye, mirroring her posture against the opposite bulkhead.

"I wanted to see if you were all right. I… heard about what happened in Fair Haven."

She turns to face him, her pressure on the bulkhead moving from shoulder to back. She feels the need to be defiant, and lifts her chin. It is either that or be abashed, and she refuses to be humiliated in his presence.

"Talk of the ship, no doubt."

He shakes his head. "No, Captain."

She raises an eyebrow.

"Tom took me aside and told me in confidence. He and Harry are worried about you, that's all. It'll go no further."

She lifts the mug to her lips, keeping her eyes on his as the strong taste fills her mouth. "Is that right?" She doesn't believe it for a moment.

"You're angry," he observes.

Kathryn stares into the mug and half smiles. "Only with myself."

"Why?"

She laughs, a short, bitter sound. "It was stupid. I was stupid."

Chakotay says nothing for a moment. She looks up at his face to find him frowning at his feet, and wonders what he is thinking.

"It wasn't stupid, Kathryn."

"Well," she says, with a shrug. "Lesson learned, at any rate."

"Tom says that Michael loves you."

She makes a sound in the back of her throat. "He's a hologram. And that may have never stopped _you_, but-"

"That's not quite what I said," he tells her, softly. "It wasn't love I was talking about."

Kathryn lets the comment pass by. The silence looms around them.

"I don't know if it's enough," she says, eventually. "I hoped it would be. I thought…"

"You thought – what?"

She shakes her head and lifts one hand to pinch away the ache in her left shoulder.

"It's not the same, is it?" He asks, softly, after a moment. "For all that it looks real, feels real - it's not."

She looks at him, into his dark eyes that are always so alive – with laughter, with anger, with joy, with energy. "No," she says. "I don't think it is."

"It doesn't make it less valid."

She makes a sound in her throat. "It does for me. I need-" She pulls herself up, realising what she is about to say, and to whom.

"What?" he asks, quietly. "Tell me what you need."

He has moved closer without her realising. Broad-shouldered, scar-faced, lilt-tongued.

_You. _The thought stuns her in its simplicity.

"Something real," she whispers. "I just need _one thing_ that's real."

_I do not know_

_who I was when I did those things_

_or who I said I was_

_or whether I willed to feel_

_what I had read about_

_or who in fact was there with me_

_or whether I knew, even then _

_that there was doubt about these things_

They are standing very close together. Kathryn is holding the mug in front of her like a shield, but doesn't resist when he takes it from her. Chakotay puts the mug down and then takes her hands, running his own up from her palms to her shoulders and then over her shoulders to her neck. She feels every muscle in his hands as he cups her face and looks down at her. It's a wonder, she thinks, that she doesn't feel small every time she stands beside this bear of a man. But he raises her up to a height that is not her own. He always has done.

"I'm real," he points out, his voice so soft that the shadows around them swallow the words whole. His thumbs stroke her cheekbones, and she can feel the pulse in his wrist, beating against her skin.

_I know_, she thinks.

"I can't," she says.

"I know," he says.

He leans forward without hesitation to catch her bottom lip between his. The kiss is brief and passionate, breathtaking. When it's over, Chakotay leans his forehead against hers and then holds her to him, tightly, firmly. Solidly. She wants more. God, she wants more. Doesn't just want it anymore, needs it. Needs _him_.

"I'm your one thing that's real," he whispers. "Never forget that."

She holds on to him for long minutes, finding herself. He holds her there until she is ready to step back. And then he smiles.

"One day," he tells her, quietly. "You will say the word, Kathryn Janeway, and then I swear you'll never doubt what's real again."

She smiles back, and it is genuine, perhaps even with a hint of flirtation. "Some might call that arrogance, Commander."

He looks down at his feet, smiling again. "You know me better than that."

"Yes," she says. "I do."

[END]

['Dialogue' by Adrienne Rich, collected in 'Diving Into The Wreck']


End file.
